After the Parties

After a short world tour yesterday, visiting family and friends some quiet again today. I actually quite enjoyed myself yesterday, visiting friends and relatives, cycling from one home to the next, and almost from one world to the next. One home very empty and organised, everything neat and tidy, another completely full with stuff everywhere, two out of four with Christmas tree, all very, very warm. I loved cycling from one to the next, the lovely fresh air. And I am
glad I managed to end a day without feeling stuffed…. It was not a day of eating and drinking too much.

Today it is my own living room, no heating but another thick jumper on, and an old sleeping bag covering my legs. When we told my father-in-law that we would be getting a refund from the gas company he did have to laugh… It does help you keep a clear head though.

I am in the middle of re-reading Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”. It is the kind of book you think you know, I remember reading it a few times when I was younger, and I remember watching the tv-series. Not the recent one, but the one starring David Rintoul as Darcy, long, long ago. So I know the story and some details, but reading it again is quite a surprise, it is so much more fun somehow than I remember. I can still read it with my own Darcy and Elizabeth
in mind, though I must confess to seeing both David Rintoul and Colin Firth creeping in there once in a while, though I haven’t even seen the latest adaptation. Knowing the story so well, leaves plenty of room for seeing all those other observations in the book. I guess next it’s back to “Sense and Sensibility”, “Emma” and the others. It’s a good thing I have a long holiday.

Wasting Time

I have been making good use of my time at home, though it is weird to have so much time to myself. I was planning to do some work from home over the holidays, but I haven’t had time to do that. So to speak. Not that the things I am doing are so important, but I do enjoy them. Today I made a video-tape for my best friend. We’ve been friends since we were tiny, and though we haven’t seen much of each other since I moved away we still are. I made a tape of all kinds of programmes featuring the Osmonds, we were both huge fans long ago. And it actually was fun seeing all those old clips again. I listen to a different kind of music now, but it does bring back some great memories.

There is a craze in this country about a singer called Frans Bauer. I can’t really describe him, I don’t have any of his cds, and I don’t really like his music. He is huge though. And he also seems a bit of a caricature. I went to see my old lady friend last night to watch him at Christmas, and it was pretty funny. It is a kind of real-life soap, but somehow it isn’t very real. It is so definitely aimed at creating a certain image. Some bits are quite funny, but that is because they come straight out of all the joke books. What amazes me is that there are people who takes this seriously.

Restless Legs

Today I read an advertisement for people with restless legs. What are restless legs? Is that a big problem? And what can you do about it? Have to work that one out. I love to read the small adverts in the Saturday paper, they often are food for thought.

Dark Days

These really are the dark days before Christmas. By five in the afternoon it is completely dark outside. I am sitting here at my computer, listening to a Dutch band called “Klein Orkest”. Like most music in this house it isn’t exactly new, but it is good. Not the usual themes, but songs for grown-ups. I can’t really remember when I last bought a CD and what it was, though I listen to a lot of music. I do tend to listen to my favourites again and again. There is Luka Bloom, a great Irish singer, who seems to have made a song for every mood. I always go back to his songs, and they are always in my head.

Love Actually

Went to see “Love Actually” today. After the last depressing film I wanted to go and see something cheerful. This one is quite funny in places, but a bit melancholy too. It is a bit too Christmassy, I guess, and not all the story lines are very good, but it was fun to watch anyway. What always amazes me is the number of talented English actors around, and even in this film with all these actors and all these story lines many wonderful actors never even got to appear.
I read some of the reviews, one of two good, but some pretty bad. I guess this isn’t great art, it is easy to criticize the film, and you can probably think of 100 reasons why it isn't great, but who cares. The last critically acclaimed film I went to left me depressed for two days, here I came out smiling. And Hugh Grant probably can do this standing on his head, no great challenges in there for him. Or for many of the others, and there is a lot of improbability in the story, but it has some very funny moments too. Hugh Grant is one dancer who can be very funny and sexy at the same time. So I just enjoyed it for what it is, a bit of fun in the run up to Christmas. Why do films these days always have to be great art, or just a lot of fighting anyway?

Next on my list is “The Return of the King”. Read the review today, and it should be worth seeing. Lots of fighting in there, though, I hear, not what I really like to watch.

Meanwhile, I’ve started reading Harriet Walters’ book on acting. It is a nice book, well-written and interesting. I’ve always enjoyed seeing her at work. But then again, I am also reading the autobiograpy of a Dutch woman writer, Hella Haasse, and I’ve just started “Pride and Prejudice” again.

Art and All That

Today I went up to Haarlem to see a couple of exhibitions. First to Teylers Museum to see an exhibition of paintings by Jacob Maris. He was a nineteenth century Dutch painter who mainly created landscapes. I am not sure why, but they didn’t really appeal to me all that much. They were mainly pretty dark, and I guess I like to have people in paintings rather than just landscapes. I did like the portraits he did, and some of the watercolours.

The second exhibition I went to see was at the Hallen. It was totally different, an exhibition of modern sculptures by Ron Mueck. They are realistic human figures, but they are the wrong size, either too big or too small. There is a huge pregnant woman, and a tiny woman who has just give birth, with her baby lying on her stomach. The statues are lifelike, beautifully made, a bit disconcerting because of the size, but some are very moving. There is a small statue of an old woman lying in her bed. You just see the face, the shape under the blankets, but it is a very moving statuette.

I guess it brings to mind an old lady I visit regularly. I first met her about a year ago, shortly after she’d had some sort of attaque. She is a friend of an aunts’, and I only went to see how she was. There wasn’t much to do for her in hospital over the Christmas holidays, so I went to see her regularly, and continued to do so after she was moved to a nursing home. When I first went to see her she was still in a wheelchair, but now she can walk again. She has her own room in the nursing home, some of her old furniture. This has been a year of change for her, but she has been so wonderful about it. She had to leave behind much of her independence, her own little house, and she has shed a few tears in the process, but she always remained cheerful and hopeful. She sees that she can still go out to the supermarket herself, that she can still go for a walk, and she doesn’t think too much about all the things she can’t do, though she can be impatient about her limitations. She is a wonderful lady, full of stories. She can go on all night about her difficult feet and her special shoes, but she can also tell you about her travels to China, Russia, Indonesia, Romania, South-Africa and other exotic places. And she has a good sense of humour. When she mentions a 90-year old friend, she talks about this ancient person, though she herself is 89. And a girl for her can be anywhere between 6 and 60.

I am still busy clearing out. I’ve done all the most obvious things, so it is getting harder now. This is the stuff I want to find a good home for. So I am sending theatre programmes off to fellow-fans, for example. And I am giving away books to people who want them.

Cloaca

The other day was one of the very few times, and the only one I can think of right now, when I actually came out of a cinema completely depressed. I went to see a Dutch film called “Cloaca”, about four men in their early forties who have been friends for over twenty years. They have turned into strange characters who on the whole are not very nice. It was a depressing story, and none of the four ended up very happy. This is so weird, because it is a good film, but there
are no compromises. I guess four of the best Dutch actors work together on this, and that shows. It does work.

I’ve started a major end of year clearance. I’ve emptied out some boxes, to make a bit more space in my house. A lot more to do over the next few weeks, I think, a good thing to do over the Christmas break. A bit boring too, I guess.

The Great Brel

Yesterday I went to the Brel exhibition in Brussels. An interesting view of his life, though maybe a bit one-sided. It is the kind of exhibition where you take a tour and have to stay with a group so you don’t get to wander around to take things at your own pace. It meant we had to rush past a few items and some screens. There was a lot of film footage, songs and interviews and that were interesting to watch.

He is quite an amazing man, he has his own view of the world, probably different from most people’s. He has all the ideals, and the courage to strive to achieve them. He seems to be the ultimate romantic. It is the kind of view that is tempting, and I guess we should all have a little bit of his daring and originality, but it is also the kind of view that can be hard on the people around you. I remember in one documentary on his life one of his daughters saying that he was never around. That is the tragedy of it. I guess you can never have it all.

But he is wonderful to watch in action. When he performs he really performs. He seems to have been so skinny, but there is all this energy to watch on stage. He doesn’t just sing his songs, he seems to live them, and all of his body is part of the performance. It is quite amazing.